10-21-2005 -- By MELISSA JORDAN-REILLY Staff Reporter

When Hannah (not her real name) first went to the AUM Sound Healing Wellness Center last January, she was not exactly a true believer in the center’s techniques.
After all, in the year since Hannah had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which includes overtones of depression and anxiety, the 22-year-old and her parents had tried a number of therapies, both traditional and holistic, as well a range of medicines.
But Hannah’s mother wanted to check out the healing center, near Highland Lake, after reading an article about healer Alice Violet Richard in the Winsted Journal.
"I was very skeptical about going, but I guess at that point I just wanted any kind of quick fix," admitted Hannah.
"As soon as I met her, though, I automatically liked her. I saw her for about six one-on-one sessions, and after that things automatically started changing, My anxiety lowered from really, really high down to just a little bit," Hannah explained.
"The transformation that’s occurred is just astonishing," agreed Richard, noting that the change was apparent after a month or so, and increased when she added group sessions.
Based on her experiences working with Hannah and even younger clients who learned to better handle stress and to kick drug habits after attending Richard’s private and group sessions, Richard is now starting a teen program.
The healer is currently seeking out families with teens ages 15 to 18 who might benefit from the program, as well as sponsors to help cover the cost of the treatment for families who can’t afford them.
Violet is also exploring sponsorship opportunities for teens who may not have enough money to afford the sessions.
"Every penny will go to [working with] the teens," she vowed. Violet charges $60 an hour for private sessions and $8-10 for group sessions.
The program is expected to help with a number of issues facing many teens, from drug abuse to ADD/ADHD, stress, depression and anxiety. It would include both private and group sessions, and parents are encouraged to be actively involved.
While the teen program is still under construction, as it were, Richard has already worked with several high school students in one-on-one sessions.
"I’ve recently started working with a 15-year-old who is under a tremendous amount of stress at school. They were looking at the possibility of taking him out of the school system and putting him into a specialized school in Hartford," Richard said. "So I worked with him on some stress relief techniques, because teens that are having a great amount of stress. He felt better immediately."
The program, she said, is a comprehensive one.
"It’s a combination of things. I meet with the teen and parents and figure out what the goals are, and then I meet just with the teen using sound healing techniques. The peer group is another facet, and will allow them to be able to see what other teens are experiencing and to talk about their conflicts at home and with teachers, while also doing vocal toning and the instruments."
For Hannah, anxiety — especially about being around other people — became the bane of her life after she graduated from college and returned home. She soon found herself working in a job she hated, under an abusive, alcoholic boss.
"It was not a good situation for me," she recalled this week.
But until she began working with Richard, Hannah lacked the motivation to find a better job, and was racked with anxiety about a class she had signed up to teach.
"But not long after I started [working with Richard] I was able to find, a better, more creative job. It just led me to a good direction."
These days, Hannah creates and manages a Web site for a group of artists, and her own work was just chosen for a show at a nearby town’s art guild.
So what exactly are these mysterious healing techniques that have clients like Hannah so eager to give testimonials about its powers?
At the center, Richard used several techniques with Hannah, including sound healing, meditation, and just good old-fashioned talking, in both private and group sessions.
Richard’s sound healing techniques involve using musical instruments to achieve certain energy frequencies in the body, as well as teaching clients to use their own voices as instruments of healing.
"Vocal toning is something people find amazing and absolutely love," said Richard of the technique of humming and making simple sounds, especially vowels sound, to achieve a certain grounding of energy.
"It’s about using your own voice to [achieve] shifted energy," Richard explained. "The body becomes its own sound instrument. It’s about humming and other [techniques] having to do with using your own voice to make simple sounds, including vowel sounds, and balancing your own energy."
Richard’s sound healing also relies on a variety of musical instruments — including Tibetan and crystal bowls, tuning forks, bells, remo drums and tinshaws (Tibetan bells) — to achieve certain vibrations which are said to help the body regulate its own frequencies.
"A lot of our group sessions start with bringing out the bowls," said Hannah. "It’s really nice because she goes through the energy thing, and it gets us grounded before we open up our chakras. People have actually been saying to me, ‘You look very grounded.’"
While talk of chakras might leave readers picturing Shirley MacLaine ranting on "The Tonight Show" about traveling around the world while her body stays in a rocking chair, medical studies have nonetheless shown that sound healing achieves remarkable results with both emotional and medical conditions. That’s because the vibrations it generates operate in a similar way to radiation, which "cooks" cancerous cells. In China, scientists have found that sound therapy raises the temperature of cancerous tumors to 140 degrees, killing them instantly.
Richard pointed out that many consider the distinction between emotional and medical conditions to be fairly blurry.
"‘Disease’ is really ‘dis-ease,’ a lower state of being caused by lower vibration rates, and there’s a need to bring back that natural state of being," she said. "So if we define emotional and physical illnesses as lower states of being, it makes sense that [there exists] a lower frequency in need of being raised."
Hannah and other AUM clients are treated with this theory in mind, Richard noted. "If you’re bipolar, you’re operating on a lower frequency. Sound therapy raises that frequency."
For Hannah, whose condition is considered both a chemical and emotional issue, the techniques she’s experienced at the AUM center have had a dramatic effect on her life, she emphasized. In fact, she remains still skeptical of some of the other healers she’s sought out, even as she extols the virtues of sound therapy.
"One healer told me that I should wear red to keep me grounded," she laughed. "And I said, ‘Wear red?! What good is that?’ Then I went to a hypnotist, and that didn’t seem to work either."
"I’d always been a negative person," Hannah added. "But now I feel much more aware, much more positive."
For more information about the teen program at AUM, or about becoming a sponsor of the program, contact 860-738-8796 or visit www.aliceviolet.com.